A Literary Magazine

Issue Twenty-One - Winter 2013

The Daily Wheel

By Tom Piekarski

I can’t deplane from the daily wheel,
grime glued to its ball bearings.
That wheel turns trapezoidally
and squawks louder than a thousand bats!

Beyond dry rolling hills to the west
where coastal fog dominates
on typical spring days
the lettuce pickers knowing nothing
of Steinbeck nevertheless toil
in fields he made famous.
On days when incessant Pacific fog
finally burns off
those workers celebrate, sunrinsed.
They are not disturbed in the least that

the Hippodrome sails far from Rome,
farther than any eye can see.

Copyright Piekarski 2012

Tom Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His theater and restaurant reviews have been published in various newspapers, with poetry and interviews appearing in numerous national journals, among them Portland Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, Nimrod, New Plains Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Clockhouse Review. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California (Gable &Gray), and Time Lines (Nimbus Press), a book of poems. He works as a fine art salesman in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California.